Journey to the end of the earth

Our surprise wake-up call came early, and we stumbled out into the cold air.

"I'm wearing an extra layer," boasted one passenger. "My pajamas."

She was smart. It was 3:40 a.m. aboard the National Geographic Explorer when expedition leader Larry Prussin alerted us to a polar bear sighting in the sea ice of Svalbard, high in the Norwegian Arctic. Some passengers, cameras ready in the pearly light of the midnight sun, lined the bow of the ship as it inched forward. Others crowded the bridge, binoculars riveted to eyes.

Nothing moved but the radar sweep on instruments. Nothing could be heard but the occasional groan of the ice against the fortified hull.

Finally the bear -- a faint yellow against the blue-white ice -- rose up on its hind haunches and slowly turned toward the ship. Camera shutters began to click like chattering birds. Even though this was our 11th polar bear sighting on the Svalbard cruise, we were as mesmerized the first time.

Seeing the bears, a threatened species, was a prime goal of the expedition cruise, but it was also the chance to explore this strange top of the world where climate extremes turn ordinary laws of nature topsy-turvy. Animals, plants, people, even the Earth itself, adapt to these extremes here within 10 degrees of the North Pole.

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We had flown to Svalbard -- an archipelago in the Barents Sea belonging to Norway, about 700 miles north of the mainland -- from Oslo. When we landed in Longyearbyen, Svalbard's main town of about 2,000 souls, we immediately experienced climate shock. In early August, the temperature was mild enough -- about 50 degrees during the day -- but the settlement was utterly barren, a stark contrast to Oslo's lush green parks and open spaces.

Parked outside the barrackslike houses were snowmobiles, the vehicle of choice in winter. Nearby sprawled a huge empty dog pen used in winter for sled dogs. Some residents have cars, though there is nowhere to drive to outside of town on Spitsbergen, Svalbard's largest island. Only three small communities exist, and no roads connect them.

We drove from a museum to a gallery to lunch at a hotel, stranded like a ski lodge in summer. En route, we encountered one roadside sign; it warned us of polar bears.

Like other places in Scandinavia, houses were painted bright ocher and red, a way to counteract the bleak landscape and winter darkness in a land where the sun never rises above the horizon from Halloween to Valentine's Day.

"We call this the dark time," said an artist who worked at Gallery Svalbard where a series of paintings by Kare Tveter recorded light on Svalbard's mountains at different times of the year. They ranged from monochromatic ghostly grays and black in winter to pink mirage shapes in March and mauve or dark tones under summer storm clouds.

From our base here we embarked on the National Geographic Explorer for a cruise of several days, visiting more of Spitsbergen and Svalbard's other islands. Shore excursions were done from Zodiacs with frequent wet landings. To protect us from Arctic waters, we wore Wellington boots and rainproof pants. Hike leaders always carried a rifle in case we encountered polar bears. We never did, though we found fresh tracks on one beach.

Our first hike explored Goose Harbor, the only other place we found with signs of human settlement. It started as a whaling camp in the late 1700s -- the world's first oil boom, according to naturalists and historian Magnus Forsberg, who led our little group over the squishy tundra to the pebbly beach. There we saw depressions on the beach marking where whalers melted blubber. Bleached whalebones lay about the campsite like giant driftwood logs. We learned that in the centuries after that, trappers camped here, and today researchers use this area as a base when exploring the vast valley.

And vast it was, especially with no buildings or trees to offer a sense of scale. Hikers who had started out about 15 minutes ahead of us were as tiny as ants against distant mist-shrouded mountains. That afternoon we visited nearby Burgerbutka, a bay rimmed with glaciers, where one of them calved an iceberg as big as a cottage. Our Zodiac rocked in its wake.

In the days that followed, we moved steadily northward in the archipelago. On a small island beyond Spitsbergen, we found our first polar bear. It sat near the shore on an isolated patch of ice barely larger than itself. Polar bears prefer ice floes, where seals are abundant. "It was probably caught here in the summer and may not have eaten for two months," said naturalist Prussin.

We lingered in the Zodiac watching Atlantic puffins, those cavorting clowns of the Arctic with huge colorful beaks. Another strange fact of Arctic climate is that bird life is rich but not diverse. While enormous colonies populate shoreline cliffs and rocks, Svalbard has only about 30 breeding species.

And then the radio on our Zodiac crackled, and we learned another raft had found a pod of walrus. We moved toward them and killed the motor. Whether the blubbery flippered group was curious, or the currents simply worked in our favor, we drifted closer to each other. We could easily see the whiskers sprouting from enormous lips and hear the snorting of wet breath. Those lips are no accident; a walrus can suck the brains out of a seal skull. They dove under and re-emerged, seeming to pose with bared tusks.

Our next goal was to explore further by cutting into the sea ice. The National Geographic Explorer's reinforced hull gives it 1A ice rating, so the ship slices through ice floes like a hot knife through butter. The unbroken white sheet simply parted ways before the bow. We found most of the bears on the ice, which is also the habitat of seals, the bear's favorite food. The bears were solitary, except for a mother and cub, who gamboled about from floe to floe. During the night, as we moved even farther north, to within about 10 degrees of the North Pole, it was hard to sleep with the groan of ice against the ship. By early afternoon, a thin white line rimmed the horizon. We edged closer, and the rim became a wall that seemed to shut off access to the North Pole. This was the Nordaustlandet icecap, the third largest in the world after Antarctica and Greenland.

I had always thought the Svalbard movie scenes in "The Golden Compass" had to be a fantasy -- surely it was not the frozen, dazzling place of endless white. But there it was, an endless ice wall about 100 feet high stretching on for 35 miles. In places, huge waterfalls cascaded from its edge as the ice cap melted its heart out. Some of the ship's crew launched a Zodiac to examine the wall and take underwater videos, which were our entertainment during the cocktail hour. All 140 passengers were on deck, and again, only the camera clicks interrupted the Arctic quiet. No birds, no seals or bears entered the scene.

Later the ship retreated farther south to a Svalbard friendlier to living things. We were promised a hike to a polar willow forest at Sundneset. We landed to the usual scene of beach and tundra; the forest, it would seem, was some distance away. We trailed naturalist Forsberg, who today had a revolver stuck in a wide belt girdling his Icelandic sweater.

He stopped. "It's in fall color," he said of the forest. I looked down. I was standing on top of the trees, no higher than the sole of my Wellingtons. Yet another wondrous adaptation of life in the high Arctic.

If you go

Getting there: SAS has daily jet service to Longyearbyen from Oslo.Cruising: The National Geographic Explorer, a Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic Society partnership with a capacity for 148 passengers, offers Svalbard itineraries each summer. Brochure prices start at $7,490 for nine-day itineraries, and discounts may be available. Onboard naturalists and National Geographic photographers, who offer lectures, guide hikes and give help with photos, are outstanding. www.expeditions.com. Hurtigruten, a Norwegian company, has Svalbard summer cruises. Nine-day itineraries start at 4,345 ($6,083). www.hurtigruten.com. Occasionally large cruise ships from lines such as Royal Caribbean may call at Spitsbergen, but the time in Svalbard is brief and they are unable to go to ice floes. What to wear: Expedition cruising is casual. Most people bring few pair of jeans or khakis, turtleneck T-shirts, fleece, sweaters and, most important, a waterproof jacket, rain pants and high waterproof boots. Wellingtons are recommended.Currency: The kroner. Norway is expensive. Expect to pay about $20 for a minimal lunch at a place with ready made sandwiches or snacks. Dinner is easily $100 for two for a modest meal.Arctic vs Antarctic cruise: Antarctica is more frequently visited by expedition ships and even large cruise ships than the Norwegian Arctic. You'll be closer to the North Pole in northern Svalbard -- about 10 degrees -- than you will be to the South Pole on Antarctica, which is more like 15 to 20 degrees. Antarctic cruises largely explore the Palmer Peninsula, which is about 20-25 degrees from the South Pole.Reading: "Arctic Dreams," by Barry Lopez; "Polar Bears" by Ian Stirling and Dan Guravich; "Svalbard: A Guide to Plants of the High Arctic" by Stephen MacLean; "The Golden Compass," by Philip Pullman, or rent the movie. More information: www.visitnorway.com